CTA Would ‘Never' Endanger People Who Attend Physical CES, Says Yacoubian
SVS Sound CEO Gary Yacoubian credits CTA for its "very thoughtful approach” to the safety in scheduling CES 2021 as a physical show amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, he told us. Yacoubian, a former CTA chairman, is back on its executive board, “so take this with a grain of salt,” he said.
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CTA is “looking at every way they can to protect the health and safety” of CES 2021 attendees, said Yacoubian. “I’m optimistic that if there is a CES -- and it’s all systems go at this time -- it will be safe.” It won't be “as well-attended” as in previous years, he said.
Many products “in our space need to be physically experienced,” said Yacoubian. “They’re not just ideas you can experience in theory.” With all physical shows canceled since the pandemic began, “I can’t imagine a CES that’s more needed by our industry, by the tech world, than the upcoming one.” CTA would “never do anything that endangers people,” said Yacoubian. “I am optimistic about CES."
As the pandemic persists, “we sort of have to figure out how to reinvent ourselves,” said Yacoubian. “I’m realizing that just because we’re working from home doesn’t mean we can’t reinvent ourselves every day, and reinvent your company every day. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
The “good news” is that the COVID-19 lockdowns “played to our strengths” at SVS, said Yacoubian. “We’re really good at virtual market engagement and e-commerce. We’ve had phenomenal success through this whole mess.” The SVS team is “building some muscles that we’ll use on the other side of this pandemic,” he said.
SVS runs a Virtual Audiophile Happy Hour event every other Thursday night that has attracted more than 100,000 views since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns, said Yacoubian. “That’s something I wouldn’t have thought of doing before the pandemic. After the pandemic, we’ll keep doing it.” It’s one of many “fun ways to engage people in a very weird, unprecedented time,” he said.
Yacoubian feels “blessed” that SVS is thriving during the crisis, he said. “I know a lot of my brethren in this space are not doing that great. We didn’t furlough anybody. I made that decision out of consideration to our team, not because I thought business was going to be so great. Lo and behold, it was great, and it stretched our company in ways I didn’t totally anticipate in terms of supply chain and customer service.”
SVS has been adding “significant head count” for the past six weeks, said Yacoubian. “In the middle of a global pandemic and recession, it seems kind of stupid to add head count, so I resisted at first." He realized if he didn’t “I’m not really being considerate of our team,” he said.
The company was able to navigate COVID-19 supply-chain disruptions in China because “we built a lot of product in Q4 last year that was intended to be built in Q1 of this year," said Yacoubian. SVS negotiated that with its Chinese factories, partly to mitigate the Section 301 List 4A tariffs, he said.
“Weirdly, this also played to our strengths that we had product when others were not building,” said Yacoubian. “We’re doing fine as far as building product. I would say the ports are extremely bottlenecked. Getting things into and out of the ports and into our warehouses in the U.S. has been difficult.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative rejected the two tariff exclusion requests SVS filed for its speaker and subwoofer imports from China. The company “failed to show” that the tariffs “would cause severe economic harm," said USTR's June 9 rejection.
The 15% tariffs were “devastating” and “scary as hell,” said Yacoubian. With their rollback to 7.5% after the phase one U.S.-China trade deal took effect mid-February, “we’re just weathering it,” he said. “We didn’t raise our prices. We’re just doing the best we can. We are sucking it up.”